


noise in my streets

by loopah



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Non-sexual humiliation, golden showers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:47:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4231068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopah/pseuds/loopah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick is lying in an alleyway, face down in dirty snow and gravel, clinging desperately to consciousness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	noise in my streets

**Author's Note:**

> you may be able to squeeze some bruce/dick out of this if you squint really really really hard.. maybe.

Dick is lying in an alleyway, face down in dirty snow and gravel, clinging desperately to consciousness. He knows he'll die if he slips out, that his suit lacks proper insulation and that if some thug stumbles across _Nightwing_ broken and defenseless, unconscious but alive before he has the chance to freeze to death, there's no way in hell that they'd turn and walk away. It's not as if Dick would be able to get away himself. Upon trying to get up the first time, he'd learned that his right leg is pretty badly broken, several ribs had been smashed, and numerous other bones and tendons had been bruised or torn. He knew he'd had the hell beaten out of him, but didn't know how bad the damage was until pain was barreling through his nerves and muscles and seeping out of his pores, and he was hitting the street hard. Getting up and walking anywhere would be a true Christmas miracle.  
  
It's not some thug that finds him, but three. Black Mask's men, Dick discerns from their dress. A grave black skull patch sewn sloppily onto the sleeve of a jacket, a black ski mask or two, pinstripes everywhere. _Subtlety,_ Dick thinks, _is lost on super-criminals nowadays._ The men approach him with guns drawn, before realizing that the chances of Dick getting up to fight them are slim to none, and begin to lament their luck at finding, quote, "Batman's own little punk baby bitch".  
  
"Whassa matter, Robin? Some big bad men get ahold of ya? Clearly don't know how to finish a job, those guys."  
  
"Watch it, man. He's _Nightwing_ now."  
  
" _Ooooooh, Nightwing._ What, did you outgrow your title? Or were you getting too old for Poppa Bat's liking?"  
  
"Yeah, he likes them boys to be real young when they run around in those scaly green panties." Dick doesn't respond, only gets his arms under him and tries to push upward. He growls through the pain but manages to get his footing on that left leg -- and is grounded immediately by a crowbar swung right into small of his back.  
  
"What, you don't got nothin' to say now? None of them zippy little one-liners a' yours?"  
  
"Hey, man. That's pretty rude. You oughta talk back when somebody speaks to ya." They're around him now, leering over him. Dick's comm wire is long dead, and he's praying that his silence prompted somebody's suspicion. Maybe Tim's already been dispatched.  
  
"Yeah, you're gettin' me pretty pissed off!" One of the thugs, one wearing a ski mask, lands a solid kick to his chest. He grunts brokenly as the steel-toed boot collides with long-shattered ribs. The force of the blow sends him rolling onto his back, granting him a better view of his assailants through the blood-screened lenses of his mask. "And unfortunately for you, when I get pissed off -- little good for nothing shits like yourself get pissed _on._ "  
  
He is surprised at the level of detached resignation with which he is able to watch the thug unzip his fly. A decade in a business like this has made Dick hard to shock. He can hear Bruce's voice when he closes his eyes and turns his face, speaking the words that he told Dick before his first night of patrol, the words that he's drilled into him for years since the moment they'd become a team and never for an instant after had let him forget: "These people will hurt you."  
  
To spend more than a few minutes on the streets of Gotham City, one has to acclimate himself to the smell of piss. Dick has spent years in these streets and is still overwhelmed now and again by the stench; the streets are sewers that nobody can be bothered to bury. Distantly, he wonders if this makes him a sewer rat, scrambling around in the shit and filth in search of smaller rats to feast on. _Sewer-rat? Or sewer-bat? Hahaha ha ha ha._ For a brief moment, his inner monologue goes all... clowny. He wonders if Joker's ever pissed on anyone. It seems like something he'd get a kick out of.  
  
_These people will hurt you._  
  
He hears it over and over when the stream hits warm and unbearably pungent on the side of his head and his stomach lurches. He squeezes his eyes shut as it trickles down over his face, purses his lips. He fights the urge to retch. If Jason were here, he'd point out how Dick had been telling Barbara only a few hours earlier that he was dying to get back to the cave and take a hot shower. Ever helpful. Of course, if Jason were here, Dick wouldn't be crumpled in a gutter getting pissed on by a criminal.  
  
It's over, it seems, as soon as it had started, due largely in part to Dick's near-meditative ability to distract himself by worrying about what Bruce will think when he gets here, what he'll do. He doesn't need to wonder long, because no sooner does Dick hear the re-zipping of a fly than two thugs are hitting the ground. He doesn't open his eyes, doesn't watch while Batman descends on the final perp. Hears the crack of bones and a strangled cry, before a body hitting asphalt hard and knows that it's over. Nobody's going to kick him bloody or piss on him anymore, but both of those things are preferable to listening to the crunch of _those_ boots in the ice and the dirt coming closer and _knowing_ the kind of shit that's swimming around in that big, imposing, pointy head.  
  
Bruce stands over him for an instant that stretches an eternity, before big gloved hands are sliding under Dick's back and behind his knees, lifting him carefully out of the slush so as to not jostle any injuries. He can hear Alfred buzzing in the comms wire in Bruce's ear from here, asking if Bruce has found him, if he's alright. Bruce lets him know that Dick's been found and that he's breathing, but makes no comment when the wires crack and Alfred asks _What happened?_  
  
Dick opens his eyes, can see the Batmobile waiting several yards away, doors open and engines running. He raises his head from where it hangs limply over Bruce's arm, lets it loll with a thud against the thick armor of Bruce's chest plating. Bruce doesn't look down at him but shifts his grip, hoisting Dick closer in his arms. Dick dares to look up at him and reads it in the line of his jaw, clenched tight, in the hard line of his mouth, the furrow of his brow.  
  
_These people will hurt you._  
  
Dick decides that it's probably safe for him to lose consciousness.


End file.
